Glenda Burgess's Blog, page 33
January 26, 2012
Blank Page
As a Zen monk once expressed it, great satisfaction lies as close as our next aware breath. Deep writers, when they can get out of their own way and achieve right silence, right intention, right relationship, and right effort, know that great satisfaction lies as close as the nearest slip of blank paper. Who would not want to experience a grave, ecstatic unlocking of the spirit of the word? Who would not want to write deeply?
We all want this. But much is required of us if we hope to craft true, beautiful things and get them to market. We are required to wrestle with our psychological demons. We are required to alter our self-talk so that we focus on our ideas and not on our frailties. We are required to intend to write, or else nothing will incubate. We are required to relate to our work and, when the time comes, relate to marketplace players. We are required to love our work and also to evaluate it.
- From "Deep Writing," by Eric Maisel
I find myself thinking about the collusion of fundamental requirements in the writer's work: silence, intention, effort. These are the conditions under which, like alchemists of old, we attempt to transform our vaguest of intentions into meaning, and if very good or inspired - art. Once the writer's work is complete in its transition from idea to page, the effort of editing begins: seeing the whole - answering the self-imposed question, "What is it I have made?" We shave away at sentence tags and shiny adjectives, attuned to exposing the theme, shaping the writing to our highest craft. Post editing, the writer's work shifts to the mandates of the publishing world and the marketing of his or her efforts. Here stand the pillars of framing, condensed summary, and successful leverage - placing work in fertile publishing soil and tending that process. (And it is a process, from manuscript to book signing!) Writing is both creation and production, and both phases are arduous, with aesthetic importance.
I have discovered personally that the first two phases, creation and editing, generally matter most to the writer. Deep inner engagement and the accomplishment of personal commitment drive meaningful writing. The third phase, marketing, matters significantly to the publishing world and the satisfied reader. All elements of the theme-to-book cycle require our best efforts. But the first two tasks are done largely in solitary, disciplined intention by the writer alone, while marketing a manuscript toward success as a book draws in the supportive talents of a crackerjack professional publishing team. Moving from solitude to committee can be nerve-wracking and yet nurturing, offering the writer expertise as well as a shared vision: each step a part of the tripod that stands a book in the marketplace and hopefully into the hands of a reader. At any given moment, regardless of where the writer is in the cycle - creating or selling - the intention in the genesis of the work must stay protected in the writer's heart. Writing begins with an insight, and that insight forms the core of everything to follow. Eric Maisel reminds us of this truth. Write deeply. Unlock the spirit of the word.
We all want this. But much is required of us if we hope to craft true, beautiful things and get them to market. We are required to wrestle with our psychological demons. We are required to alter our self-talk so that we focus on our ideas and not on our frailties. We are required to intend to write, or else nothing will incubate. We are required to relate to our work and, when the time comes, relate to marketplace players. We are required to love our work and also to evaluate it.
- From "Deep Writing," by Eric Maisel
I find myself thinking about the collusion of fundamental requirements in the writer's work: silence, intention, effort. These are the conditions under which, like alchemists of old, we attempt to transform our vaguest of intentions into meaning, and if very good or inspired - art. Once the writer's work is complete in its transition from idea to page, the effort of editing begins: seeing the whole - answering the self-imposed question, "What is it I have made?" We shave away at sentence tags and shiny adjectives, attuned to exposing the theme, shaping the writing to our highest craft. Post editing, the writer's work shifts to the mandates of the publishing world and the marketing of his or her efforts. Here stand the pillars of framing, condensed summary, and successful leverage - placing work in fertile publishing soil and tending that process. (And it is a process, from manuscript to book signing!) Writing is both creation and production, and both phases are arduous, with aesthetic importance.
I have discovered personally that the first two phases, creation and editing, generally matter most to the writer. Deep inner engagement and the accomplishment of personal commitment drive meaningful writing. The third phase, marketing, matters significantly to the publishing world and the satisfied reader. All elements of the theme-to-book cycle require our best efforts. But the first two tasks are done largely in solitary, disciplined intention by the writer alone, while marketing a manuscript toward success as a book draws in the supportive talents of a crackerjack professional publishing team. Moving from solitude to committee can be nerve-wracking and yet nurturing, offering the writer expertise as well as a shared vision: each step a part of the tripod that stands a book in the marketplace and hopefully into the hands of a reader. At any given moment, regardless of where the writer is in the cycle - creating or selling - the intention in the genesis of the work must stay protected in the writer's heart. Writing begins with an insight, and that insight forms the core of everything to follow. Eric Maisel reminds us of this truth. Write deeply. Unlock the spirit of the word.
January 23, 2012
World Book Night
BIBLIOPHILIA
Some like the aroma of kitchens
Others, the bouquet of fine wine.
I like the look and smell of a book
As I lovingly finger its spine.
I long to uncover its secrets
I just want to take it to bed
Most delicious of treats,
To slip into its sheets
Head down, pages spread.
- Tony Lupton
World Book Night, a British experiment in giving away royalty-free new books to strangers, is coming to the US - let's get on board! Check out their website at www.WorldBookNight.org (click on the blue icon above for a direct link) for more information on this world book giveaway program. Volunteers to give away books needed! Here
Some like the aroma of kitchens
Others, the bouquet of fine wine.
I like the look and smell of a book
As I lovingly finger its spine.
I long to uncover its secrets
I just want to take it to bed
Most delicious of treats,
To slip into its sheets
Head down, pages spread.
- Tony Lupton
World Book Night, a British experiment in giving away royalty-free new books to strangers, is coming to the US - let's get on board! Check out their website at www.WorldBookNight.org (click on the blue icon above for a direct link) for more information on this world book giveaway program. Volunteers to give away books needed! Here
January 19, 2012
Snow Day
if you think this is a big snow storm, you're right.
- my son, manning the snowblower for third time that afternoon
Nature is an amazing leveler: all our industrious and self-generated activities come to a standstill in the midst of a snow cloud of enormous proportions swirling over our heads. Six inches in as many hours, on top of yesterday's and ahead of tomorrow. And this is nothing compared to the dump of white blowing across the dormant wheat fields of the Palouse...
Winter has a way of putting the world on pause. Travel becomes challenging. We man the snow shovels, check candles. Power goes out, silencing our smart phones, e-readers and iPads; the work force trickles home sliding down the roads, the kids wake to a day off school. All caution and worry aside, I love these days. It was perfectly silent when I awoke this morning, the quiet of a thick blanket of snow. Hours later the neighbors were out blowing snow, kids shrieking in the streets with sleds...a chance to say hello and how are you. A great moment for catching up with ourselves - from sleep to those power-off activities like reading and letter writing. The letter carrier trundled by, chains chunking the snow around his wheel wells as he waved cheerily. Yes, not even snow stops the US Postal Service.
I plan spending my day beside a cozy fire, baking bread and making soup, reading a favorite book. Thank you, nature, for a snow day.
- my son, manning the snowblower for third time that afternoon
Nature is an amazing leveler: all our industrious and self-generated activities come to a standstill in the midst of a snow cloud of enormous proportions swirling over our heads. Six inches in as many hours, on top of yesterday's and ahead of tomorrow. And this is nothing compared to the dump of white blowing across the dormant wheat fields of the Palouse...
Winter has a way of putting the world on pause. Travel becomes challenging. We man the snow shovels, check candles. Power goes out, silencing our smart phones, e-readers and iPads; the work force trickles home sliding down the roads, the kids wake to a day off school. All caution and worry aside, I love these days. It was perfectly silent when I awoke this morning, the quiet of a thick blanket of snow. Hours later the neighbors were out blowing snow, kids shrieking in the streets with sleds...a chance to say hello and how are you. A great moment for catching up with ourselves - from sleep to those power-off activities like reading and letter writing. The letter carrier trundled by, chains chunking the snow around his wheel wells as he waved cheerily. Yes, not even snow stops the US Postal Service.
I plan spending my day beside a cozy fire, baking bread and making soup, reading a favorite book. Thank you, nature, for a snow day.
January 15, 2012
Character
A portrait is a picture with a little something wrong about the mouth...
-John Singer Sargent
I set to work this morning at my writing desk, fleshing out a mental sketch of a character observed at a classical guitar concert last night. As I toyed with the subtleties of character revealed both in the actions and inward reflection of others, I thought about the quote above credited to the prolific portraitist John Singer Sargent, a man who made his fortune studying the revealing detail. I am fascinated by Singer's infamous "Madame X," who gazes away from us from her height on the wall at the Met with such poise, with her delicate composure and dangerous smile - that little something in the averted glance, the lift of her upper lip at the innermost corner. What is she thinking, and how is it we know, strangers centuries later observing her likeness, that this, this mysterious smile, is her signature gesture? "Madame X" - Madame Pierre Gautreau - the anonymous beauty with a secret.
My character from the evening's concert was far more tame I suppose - an older man with a distinguished head of silver hair, sitting alone, holding himself militarily upright for the entire two hour performance. Not stiffly, but very still. As if all his focus were gathered in the act of listening. A glass of red wine rested on the table to the left of his elbow. More formally attired than most in attendance, he wore a parchment-colored cashmere turtleneck and dark, elegant blazer. His face, broad and deeply lined, reminded me of the countenance of a field hound, impassive as he listened. What is his story, I wondered. Widower? Perhaps alone just this night, sole afficinado of the classical guitar amongst his intimates? I could only guess, as like Singer's "Madame X," his remarkable composure invited speculation and deflected exposure. His story sealed behind the quiet pleasure in his eyes.
A character is an invitation to a story. Great characters people our surroundings with silhouettes of legends and ballads of heroics and woe. I love that the portrait, the artistic effort to capture the human spirit within a look, is most genuine in the errant detail. That little bit of something that stands apart as imperfect, unique, original. What I will remember of my character in the audience last night is the image of his pale, perfectly folded hands resting on the table. This little detail suggests the composure reflected in his genial expression mirrors the tranquility of his soul; that my elderly gentleman is perfectly folded from within to without, a spirit in order. Then again, maybe he is a former priest, trained in stillness. Or a military man, retired from the wars, holding his thoughts and pleasures to himself. A professor perhaps? A surgeon? An experienced birdwatcher, quiet in his observance. I shall never know...which is what makes the portrait a fascination. His story is in his hands.
-John Singer Sargent
I set to work this morning at my writing desk, fleshing out a mental sketch of a character observed at a classical guitar concert last night. As I toyed with the subtleties of character revealed both in the actions and inward reflection of others, I thought about the quote above credited to the prolific portraitist John Singer Sargent, a man who made his fortune studying the revealing detail. I am fascinated by Singer's infamous "Madame X," who gazes away from us from her height on the wall at the Met with such poise, with her delicate composure and dangerous smile - that little something in the averted glance, the lift of her upper lip at the innermost corner. What is she thinking, and how is it we know, strangers centuries later observing her likeness, that this, this mysterious smile, is her signature gesture? "Madame X" - Madame Pierre Gautreau - the anonymous beauty with a secret.
My character from the evening's concert was far more tame I suppose - an older man with a distinguished head of silver hair, sitting alone, holding himself militarily upright for the entire two hour performance. Not stiffly, but very still. As if all his focus were gathered in the act of listening. A glass of red wine rested on the table to the left of his elbow. More formally attired than most in attendance, he wore a parchment-colored cashmere turtleneck and dark, elegant blazer. His face, broad and deeply lined, reminded me of the countenance of a field hound, impassive as he listened. What is his story, I wondered. Widower? Perhaps alone just this night, sole afficinado of the classical guitar amongst his intimates? I could only guess, as like Singer's "Madame X," his remarkable composure invited speculation and deflected exposure. His story sealed behind the quiet pleasure in his eyes.
A character is an invitation to a story. Great characters people our surroundings with silhouettes of legends and ballads of heroics and woe. I love that the portrait, the artistic effort to capture the human spirit within a look, is most genuine in the errant detail. That little bit of something that stands apart as imperfect, unique, original. What I will remember of my character in the audience last night is the image of his pale, perfectly folded hands resting on the table. This little detail suggests the composure reflected in his genial expression mirrors the tranquility of his soul; that my elderly gentleman is perfectly folded from within to without, a spirit in order. Then again, maybe he is a former priest, trained in stillness. Or a military man, retired from the wars, holding his thoughts and pleasures to himself. A professor perhaps? A surgeon? An experienced birdwatcher, quiet in his observance. I shall never know...which is what makes the portrait a fascination. His story is in his hands.
January 12, 2012
An Age of Earnest Endeavor
SHADOW
The sun finally goes down like the end
of the Russian novel, and the blinding darkness
over the continent makes me realize
how tired I am of reading and writing,
tired of watching all the dull, horse-drawn sentences
as they plough through fields of paper,
tired of being dragged on a leash of words
by an author I can never look up and see,
tired of examining the exposed spines of books,
I want to be far from the shores of language,
a boat without passengers, lost at sea,
no correspondence, no thesaurus,
not even a name painted across the bow.
Nothing but silence, the kind that falls
whenever I walk outside with a notebook
and a passing cloud darkens my page.
-Billy Collins
I think the theme of my work life is shifting as technology redefines the book. The e-reader eats away the physical spine and pages of the print and bound book. My world, where colorful books I have read rest on shelves like old conversations with dear friends, and books I have yet to read beckon like exotic adventures, is disappearing from the landscape. My daughter has an e-reader. There she is, curled up on the sofa with her little light: she loves the versimilitude of the device to a book as it rests in her hand, I mourn the actual book. I mourn the vanishing art of cover design, the history of fonts, techniques of paper making, and the good old heft of a hardback in your hand. She loves the portability: the invisible space of her new library of digital stories. Easy to store, to move, to delete, to add. Her virtual bookshelf is perfectly fungible with her modern portable life.
Collin's poem stirs something in my heart, touching on the weariness of the weight of words to a writer and the struggle to produce something good we carry in our thoughts. How diligently, and often with great futility, we try to do something meaningful and artistic with simple elements of language and imagery. Now the word itself has become a digital flicker. I am slipping into the anachronism of my own time. The publishing world, books themselves, even the content of what people prefer to read reflects the digital impermanence of the 21st Century. I believe the day has come - as Steve Martin's wonderful novel so effectively skewers art history in "An Object of Beauty" - where the world of literature will widen between the mockery and irony of a new generation's self-dismissal spiked by love of effervescent pop celebrity, and the difficult stillness of old masters, of work that stands alone within the unreproachable dust of an age of earnest endeavor. The masterpiece of thirty seconds versus the masterpiece of an age.
Evidence of the declining half-life of literature lies in the rankings of contemporary New York Time's Bestseller lists: fiction has atrophied, dominated by genre, and nonfiction bounces between the caustic tell-all and cheerleading self-help. The occasional historical biography of weight and merit rises to our attention, and I think this may well be the last of great intellectual writing, destined for a liberal arts curriculum. The future belongs to the paragraph summary on the internet.
So many readers are choosing to read only the classics. What was said that is worth reading, I have been told, lies firmly in the past. I'm not sure I agree all that is modern is without soul or content - after all, the case is clearly made that yesterday's masters were in their own time outlaws of change - but what does seem to have shifted is the passion within the revolution to make something of worth. Jackson Pollack's drip paintings mark a concentrated push to reinvent the brush stroke, not a flip toss toward cheaply consumable "moments" of art. Melville's Moby Dick consumed a lifetime. Margaret Mitchell put human story in the events of civil war. I hope I am wrong about the shift in literature from content to disposable consumability. I already miss books.
The sun finally goes down like the end
of the Russian novel, and the blinding darkness
over the continent makes me realize
how tired I am of reading and writing,
tired of watching all the dull, horse-drawn sentences
as they plough through fields of paper,
tired of being dragged on a leash of words
by an author I can never look up and see,
tired of examining the exposed spines of books,
I want to be far from the shores of language,
a boat without passengers, lost at sea,
no correspondence, no thesaurus,
not even a name painted across the bow.
Nothing but silence, the kind that falls
whenever I walk outside with a notebook
and a passing cloud darkens my page.
-Billy Collins
I think the theme of my work life is shifting as technology redefines the book. The e-reader eats away the physical spine and pages of the print and bound book. My world, where colorful books I have read rest on shelves like old conversations with dear friends, and books I have yet to read beckon like exotic adventures, is disappearing from the landscape. My daughter has an e-reader. There she is, curled up on the sofa with her little light: she loves the versimilitude of the device to a book as it rests in her hand, I mourn the actual book. I mourn the vanishing art of cover design, the history of fonts, techniques of paper making, and the good old heft of a hardback in your hand. She loves the portability: the invisible space of her new library of digital stories. Easy to store, to move, to delete, to add. Her virtual bookshelf is perfectly fungible with her modern portable life.
Collin's poem stirs something in my heart, touching on the weariness of the weight of words to a writer and the struggle to produce something good we carry in our thoughts. How diligently, and often with great futility, we try to do something meaningful and artistic with simple elements of language and imagery. Now the word itself has become a digital flicker. I am slipping into the anachronism of my own time. The publishing world, books themselves, even the content of what people prefer to read reflects the digital impermanence of the 21st Century. I believe the day has come - as Steve Martin's wonderful novel so effectively skewers art history in "An Object of Beauty" - where the world of literature will widen between the mockery and irony of a new generation's self-dismissal spiked by love of effervescent pop celebrity, and the difficult stillness of old masters, of work that stands alone within the unreproachable dust of an age of earnest endeavor. The masterpiece of thirty seconds versus the masterpiece of an age.
Evidence of the declining half-life of literature lies in the rankings of contemporary New York Time's Bestseller lists: fiction has atrophied, dominated by genre, and nonfiction bounces between the caustic tell-all and cheerleading self-help. The occasional historical biography of weight and merit rises to our attention, and I think this may well be the last of great intellectual writing, destined for a liberal arts curriculum. The future belongs to the paragraph summary on the internet.
So many readers are choosing to read only the classics. What was said that is worth reading, I have been told, lies firmly in the past. I'm not sure I agree all that is modern is without soul or content - after all, the case is clearly made that yesterday's masters were in their own time outlaws of change - but what does seem to have shifted is the passion within the revolution to make something of worth. Jackson Pollack's drip paintings mark a concentrated push to reinvent the brush stroke, not a flip toss toward cheaply consumable "moments" of art. Melville's Moby Dick consumed a lifetime. Margaret Mitchell put human story in the events of civil war. I hope I am wrong about the shift in literature from content to disposable consumability. I already miss books.
January 8, 2012
The Way Is Grace
You can have the other words - chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
- Mary Oliver
Sailors on the open seas often speak of unforseen lulls in the winds - those strong and blustery trade winds that ply boats horizon to horizon. I think of these times of stalled momentum as empty spaces. Empty of grace. Surges of achievement - the momentous leaps we take bounding through the world as though running hurdles - seem able to depart from our lives with the break of a heartbeat. What happened? the confused self asks. One minute we're on target, blazing down the road...next second, sidelined in the broken trees. Grace unfurls the flag with each shift of intention, each correction in course, every moment we struggle. Grace departs in the wake of uncertainty and mistake; grace arrives with purpose and intent.
One I love is stalled in seas of lostness. Misfortune shredded his sails in a tearing howl and like Ulysses, his ship drifts in uncertain waters. He rows forward through the gloom, awaiting the passing of the shrouds of clouds. And as do most of us, he puts in a steady effort to find course again...and yet each effort is met with a kind of hand of destiny, pushing back. Wait, wait, is the whisper. Wait on what? Perhaps, it occurs to me, we wait on grace. On the intervention of whatever that thing may be that is not just chance or luck, more than coincidence or serendipity. We wait on the sudden lift of filled sails, the miracle of known whereabouts. A new course set by an unseen hand and clouds disperse, the bright light fills our eyes. Wait within. Wait patiently. Wait still. Listen. But wait. Grace arrives when it is no longer expected. Grace rings true. Grace answers the unanswered question.
Mary Oliver, the poet, wryly observed, "Nobody ever says of a painter he has lost his way. It is said of writers. But when one is talking about a painter one says, 'He is finding his way.'" Is this not true of all? We are finding the way, our way. With grace.
- Mary Oliver
Sailors on the open seas often speak of unforseen lulls in the winds - those strong and blustery trade winds that ply boats horizon to horizon. I think of these times of stalled momentum as empty spaces. Empty of grace. Surges of achievement - the momentous leaps we take bounding through the world as though running hurdles - seem able to depart from our lives with the break of a heartbeat. What happened? the confused self asks. One minute we're on target, blazing down the road...next second, sidelined in the broken trees. Grace unfurls the flag with each shift of intention, each correction in course, every moment we struggle. Grace departs in the wake of uncertainty and mistake; grace arrives with purpose and intent.
One I love is stalled in seas of lostness. Misfortune shredded his sails in a tearing howl and like Ulysses, his ship drifts in uncertain waters. He rows forward through the gloom, awaiting the passing of the shrouds of clouds. And as do most of us, he puts in a steady effort to find course again...and yet each effort is met with a kind of hand of destiny, pushing back. Wait, wait, is the whisper. Wait on what? Perhaps, it occurs to me, we wait on grace. On the intervention of whatever that thing may be that is not just chance or luck, more than coincidence or serendipity. We wait on the sudden lift of filled sails, the miracle of known whereabouts. A new course set by an unseen hand and clouds disperse, the bright light fills our eyes. Wait within. Wait patiently. Wait still. Listen. But wait. Grace arrives when it is no longer expected. Grace rings true. Grace answers the unanswered question.
Mary Oliver, the poet, wryly observed, "Nobody ever says of a painter he has lost his way. It is said of writers. But when one is talking about a painter one says, 'He is finding his way.'" Is this not true of all? We are finding the way, our way. With grace.
January 4, 2012
Filaments
A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the sphere to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
- Walt Whitman
Let's speak of making things happen. That old-fashioned determination to take a flame of inspiration, a theory, and produce a bonfire of invention. A translucent palace engineered of pillars of imagination and arches of intent. In my world, this bonfire is the creation of books, both fiction and nonfiction. And the personal and universal chameleon-like qualities of poetry.
Creative work is frequently viewed skeptically, with genuine puzzlement. Exhibit A: I had a funny, hilariously disconcerting experience at a recent Christmas gathering of successful, affluent physicians. The kind of skilled, hard-working folk with lake homes and annual sojourns to Europe. I was introduced to a wizened, elderly doctor in a stolid tweed jacket gingerly holding between three fingers a wine glass of worthy good red.
"Meet Glenda, she's a fiction author."
The man pursed his lips in reflexive surprise. He then fixed me with one eye under a thrush of white eyebrow. "Fiction?"
"Yes," I said. "And the occasional nonfiction, if reality becomes the more interesting."
"So you make things up?" The question fell flat, his point clarified.
"I do. I make things up."
That was it. There was nothing more to say. Simply put, I was someone whose worth in the world was summed up by the declarative observation You make things up. I laughed, I couldn't help it. The comment was so fulsomely dismissive: I was someone who had nothing better to offer the world than daydreaming. Days later, that comment nudged me to think deeply about the value of creativity - to me. It might not matter to the good doctor, or the heart surgeon who asked me point blank if "Writers made any money" (Yacht money, he implied. Film options, I assured him.), but to me, the creative process is courageous. I admire artists, builders of all kinds, for the inventive genius born of an intersection of inspiration, the guided hand, patience and technique, and the occasional beautiful accident.
Ask yourself this, What creates lust in the eye of the beholder, the need to own, to read, to look and look and look again? Why does the collector collect and the artist faithfully chisel The David from a centuries old block of marble? That intangible original intimate element expressed by the human soul. As Whitman observes, we are the driven patient creature willing to launch filaments of effort "ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing." Building bridges, finding an anchor. Crafting the meaningful. A man or woman forms an object of understanding from the turbulent unknown, spins from imagination a theory of the "vacant vast surrounding." A construction of meaning, of beauty, dream partnered into existence by a restless spirit. We make things up.
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the sphere to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
- Walt Whitman
Let's speak of making things happen. That old-fashioned determination to take a flame of inspiration, a theory, and produce a bonfire of invention. A translucent palace engineered of pillars of imagination and arches of intent. In my world, this bonfire is the creation of books, both fiction and nonfiction. And the personal and universal chameleon-like qualities of poetry.
Creative work is frequently viewed skeptically, with genuine puzzlement. Exhibit A: I had a funny, hilariously disconcerting experience at a recent Christmas gathering of successful, affluent physicians. The kind of skilled, hard-working folk with lake homes and annual sojourns to Europe. I was introduced to a wizened, elderly doctor in a stolid tweed jacket gingerly holding between three fingers a wine glass of worthy good red.
"Meet Glenda, she's a fiction author."
The man pursed his lips in reflexive surprise. He then fixed me with one eye under a thrush of white eyebrow. "Fiction?"
"Yes," I said. "And the occasional nonfiction, if reality becomes the more interesting."
"So you make things up?" The question fell flat, his point clarified.
"I do. I make things up."
That was it. There was nothing more to say. Simply put, I was someone whose worth in the world was summed up by the declarative observation You make things up. I laughed, I couldn't help it. The comment was so fulsomely dismissive: I was someone who had nothing better to offer the world than daydreaming. Days later, that comment nudged me to think deeply about the value of creativity - to me. It might not matter to the good doctor, or the heart surgeon who asked me point blank if "Writers made any money" (Yacht money, he implied. Film options, I assured him.), but to me, the creative process is courageous. I admire artists, builders of all kinds, for the inventive genius born of an intersection of inspiration, the guided hand, patience and technique, and the occasional beautiful accident.
Ask yourself this, What creates lust in the eye of the beholder, the need to own, to read, to look and look and look again? Why does the collector collect and the artist faithfully chisel The David from a centuries old block of marble? That intangible original intimate element expressed by the human soul. As Whitman observes, we are the driven patient creature willing to launch filaments of effort "ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing." Building bridges, finding an anchor. Crafting the meaningful. A man or woman forms an object of understanding from the turbulent unknown, spins from imagination a theory of the "vacant vast surrounding." A construction of meaning, of beauty, dream partnered into existence by a restless spirit. We make things up.
January 1, 2012
The Humble Ordinary
PIED BEAUTY
Glory be to God for dappled things
Glory be to God for dappled things
December 29, 2011
Settling Into One's Life
I don't think I am old yet, or done with growing. But my perspective has altered - I am less hungry for the busyness of the body, more interested in the tricks of the mind. I am gaining, also, a new affection for wood that is useless, that has been tossed out, that merely exists, quietly, wherever it has ended up. Planks on the beach rippled and salt-soaked. Pieces of piling, full of the tunnels of shipworm. In the woods, fallen branches of oak, of maple, of the dear, wind-worn pines. They lie on the ground and do nothing. They are travelers on the way to oblivion... Call it Rest. I sit on one of the branches. My idleness suits me. I am content. I have built my house. The blue butterflies, called azures, twinkle up from the secret place where they have been waiting. In their small blue dresses they float among the branches, they come close to me, one rests for a moment on my wrist. They do not recognize me as anything very different from this enfoldment of leaves, this wind-roarer, this wooden palace lying down, now, upon the earth, like anything heavy, and happy, and full of sunlight, and half-asleep.
- from "Winter Hours," Mary Oliver
I assure you my theme as the year ends is not old age and oblivion, but this idea of settling into one's life - having built the house to build it, and having done so, resting in its shadow a part of all that lives and occupies the geography of personal space and time. Mary Oliver's essays in "Winter Hours" are thoughtful: observations both detached and intimate, crisp exploratory writings about what it means to at last see one's life whole, an organic, evolving, theme of the self. One of the important passages of the New Year for me is checking in with my own evolving self. How have I fared in pursuit of my goals? How have I absorbed the unpredictable, the shift of borders, edged a toe through limitations? Have I learned anything?
Oliver writes perceptively of human endeavor as a construct, a shelter for creative thought. She stands before a cabin in the woods she hand-built, a private room for writing which in time became a little-used potting shed. She realizes she built the cabin not for writing, not for thought, but for the sake of building. The work done, she can lie in its humble shade among the blue butterflies. She becomes aware her presence lies in nature, not in her construct. Oliver points out that it is instinctive to examine life, ponder what makes things work, what causes one thing to nurture another, that creates the future out of the past. We view ourselves as part of the vast natural interchange of what lives and dies, but also are stricken by the secret wish to be beyond all that. Oliver concludes wryly, You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul. That worrier.
As this year comes to its rapid close, I find myself taking stock of my "constructs." Family, work, home, friendships. All these organic symbols of my life, of the living I have done. Are they worthy of the sacredness of life, have I lived up to my own soul's expectations? More importantly, have I lived strong and true within the essential principles as nature would have them? My determination for this year end is simple - examine that which is foolish. Where am I following the blueprint of a construct, not a life? Where lies the potting-shed within the palace, the truth of lying down, now, upon the earth, like anything heavy, and happy, and full of sunlight, and half asleep. To find the sunspot of life, not travel lost in the work of working at it.
- from "Winter Hours," Mary Oliver
I assure you my theme as the year ends is not old age and oblivion, but this idea of settling into one's life - having built the house to build it, and having done so, resting in its shadow a part of all that lives and occupies the geography of personal space and time. Mary Oliver's essays in "Winter Hours" are thoughtful: observations both detached and intimate, crisp exploratory writings about what it means to at last see one's life whole, an organic, evolving, theme of the self. One of the important passages of the New Year for me is checking in with my own evolving self. How have I fared in pursuit of my goals? How have I absorbed the unpredictable, the shift of borders, edged a toe through limitations? Have I learned anything?
Oliver writes perceptively of human endeavor as a construct, a shelter for creative thought. She stands before a cabin in the woods she hand-built, a private room for writing which in time became a little-used potting shed. She realizes she built the cabin not for writing, not for thought, but for the sake of building. The work done, she can lie in its humble shade among the blue butterflies. She becomes aware her presence lies in nature, not in her construct. Oliver points out that it is instinctive to examine life, ponder what makes things work, what causes one thing to nurture another, that creates the future out of the past. We view ourselves as part of the vast natural interchange of what lives and dies, but also are stricken by the secret wish to be beyond all that. Oliver concludes wryly, You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul. That worrier.
As this year comes to its rapid close, I find myself taking stock of my "constructs." Family, work, home, friendships. All these organic symbols of my life, of the living I have done. Are they worthy of the sacredness of life, have I lived up to my own soul's expectations? More importantly, have I lived strong and true within the essential principles as nature would have them? My determination for this year end is simple - examine that which is foolish. Where am I following the blueprint of a construct, not a life? Where lies the potting-shed within the palace, the truth of lying down, now, upon the earth, like anything heavy, and happy, and full of sunlight, and half asleep. To find the sunspot of life, not travel lost in the work of working at it.
December 26, 2011
The Art of Memory
THIS ROOM AND EVERYTHING IN IT
Lie still now
while I prepare for my future,
certain hard days ahead,
when I'll need what I know so clearly this moment.
I am making use
of the one thing I learned
of all the things my father tried to teach me:
the art of memory.
I am letting this room
and everything in it
stand for my ideas about love
and its difficulties.
I'll let your love cries,
those spacious notes
of a moment ago,
stand for distance.
Your scent,
that scent
of spice and a wound,
I'll let stand for mystery.
Your sunken belly
is the daily cup
of milk I drank
as a boy before the morning prayer.
The sun on the face
of the wall
is God, the face
I can't see, my soul,
and so on, each thing
standing for a separate idea,
and those ideas forming the constellation
of my greater idea.
And oen day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about love,
I'll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it:
My body is estrangement.
This desire, perfection.
Your closed eyes my extinction.
Now I've forgotten my
idea. The book
on the windowsill, riffled by wind...
the even-numbered pages are
the past, the odd-
numbered pages, the future.
The sun is
God, your body is milk...
useless, useless...
your cries are song, my body's not me...
no good... my idea
has evaporated...your hair is time, your thighs are song...
it had something to do
with death...it had something
to do with love.
- Li-Young Lee
The beauty in the lines of Young's poem, in particular the opening stanzas, remind me today of memory and the purpose our reflections serve in constructing, as Jean Paul opined, a refuge where "Memory is the only Paradise from which we cannot be driven." I find myself touching on this thought as I reflect on the year passing and those decades before that. The New Year brings a certain personal melancholy now, a telltale sign I am sure. Too old to believe in absolute fresh starts, too aware of the ebb and flow of fortune to forget a good year may be backed by one less so and a bad year never necessarily grants a change in luck ahead. I find myself, like the shipwrecked tourist clinging to shards of golden days that bob away toward the horizon, possessed of a rather existential anxiety - irrationally sorry to see even hard days depart because they may be kinder than any ahead.
Is this wisdom? Or the wear and tear of survival? This sense that a happy life is a parenthesis of joyful pauses in a long run of accidental flats and sharps that not only leave us breathless but disoriented and dismayed the song remains, still, so unfamiliar? Perhaps the longer we live the clearer we comprehend unexpected joy greases the skids, so to speak; gives life the glide and momentum we need to enthusiastically ride the wave back to the crest. I find, as 2011 winds down, that I am grateful to the unencumbered, lighthearted moments within the march of days; that I will remember the tough as nails transitions and sorrows, but what lingers in my heart is joy. That all we experience, love, and regret, is"of spice and a wound/I'll let stand for mystery."
Young writes of love and his lover and a road ahead both long and hard and I envision embracing the new year with hope. That like the poet, I am "letting this room/and everything in it" speak my ideas about life. That presence, awareness, even the imprint of detail, forms the continuum that is the "art of memory."
Lie still now
while I prepare for my future,
certain hard days ahead,
when I'll need what I know so clearly this moment.
I am making use
of the one thing I learned
of all the things my father tried to teach me:
the art of memory.
I am letting this room
and everything in it
stand for my ideas about love
and its difficulties.
I'll let your love cries,
those spacious notes
of a moment ago,
stand for distance.
Your scent,
that scent
of spice and a wound,
I'll let stand for mystery.
Your sunken belly
is the daily cup
of milk I drank
as a boy before the morning prayer.
The sun on the face
of the wall
is God, the face
I can't see, my soul,
and so on, each thing
standing for a separate idea,
and those ideas forming the constellation
of my greater idea.
And oen day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about love,
I'll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it:
My body is estrangement.
This desire, perfection.
Your closed eyes my extinction.
Now I've forgotten my
idea. The book
on the windowsill, riffled by wind...
the even-numbered pages are
the past, the odd-
numbered pages, the future.
The sun is
God, your body is milk...
useless, useless...
your cries are song, my body's not me...
no good... my idea
has evaporated...your hair is time, your thighs are song...
it had something to do
with death...it had something
to do with love.
- Li-Young Lee
The beauty in the lines of Young's poem, in particular the opening stanzas, remind me today of memory and the purpose our reflections serve in constructing, as Jean Paul opined, a refuge where "Memory is the only Paradise from which we cannot be driven." I find myself touching on this thought as I reflect on the year passing and those decades before that. The New Year brings a certain personal melancholy now, a telltale sign I am sure. Too old to believe in absolute fresh starts, too aware of the ebb and flow of fortune to forget a good year may be backed by one less so and a bad year never necessarily grants a change in luck ahead. I find myself, like the shipwrecked tourist clinging to shards of golden days that bob away toward the horizon, possessed of a rather existential anxiety - irrationally sorry to see even hard days depart because they may be kinder than any ahead.
Is this wisdom? Or the wear and tear of survival? This sense that a happy life is a parenthesis of joyful pauses in a long run of accidental flats and sharps that not only leave us breathless but disoriented and dismayed the song remains, still, so unfamiliar? Perhaps the longer we live the clearer we comprehend unexpected joy greases the skids, so to speak; gives life the glide and momentum we need to enthusiastically ride the wave back to the crest. I find, as 2011 winds down, that I am grateful to the unencumbered, lighthearted moments within the march of days; that I will remember the tough as nails transitions and sorrows, but what lingers in my heart is joy. That all we experience, love, and regret, is"of spice and a wound/I'll let stand for mystery."
Young writes of love and his lover and a road ahead both long and hard and I envision embracing the new year with hope. That like the poet, I am "letting this room/and everything in it" speak my ideas about life. That presence, awareness, even the imprint of detail, forms the continuum that is the "art of memory."
